Sensors 2011, 11(6), 6328-6353; https://doi.org/10.3390/s110606328
Automatic Forest-Fire Measuring Using Ground Stations and Unmanned Aerial Systems
1
Robotics, Computer Vision and Control Group, Universidad de Sevilla, Seville, 41092, Spain
2
Robotics, Computer Vision and Control Group, Pablo de Olavide University, Seville, 41013, Spain
3
Centre for Advanced Aerospace Technology (CATEC), Seville, 41309, Spain
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 1 April 2011 / Revised: 31 May 2011 / Accepted: 2 June 2011 / Published: 16 June 2011
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensors in Agriculture and Forestry)
Abstract
This paper presents a novel system for automatic forest-fire measurement using cameras distributed at ground stations and mounted on Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). It can obtain geometrical measurements of forest fires in real-time such as the location and shape of the fire front, flame height and rate of spread, among others. Measurement of forest fires is a challenging problem that is affected by numerous potential sources of error. The proposed system addresses them by exploiting the complementarities between infrared and visual cameras located at different ground locations together with others onboard Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). The system applies image processing and geo-location techniques to obtain forest-fire measurements individually from each camera and then integrates the results from all the cameras using statistical data fusion techniques. The proposed system has been extensively tested and validated in close-to-operational conditions in field fire experiments with controlled safety conditions carried out in Portugal and Spain from 2001 to 2006. View Full-TextKeywords:
perception systems; Unmanned Aerial Systems; forest fires
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0).
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MDPI and ACS Style
Martínez-de Dios, J.R.; Merino, L.; Caballero, F.; Ollero, A. Automatic Forest-Fire Measuring Using Ground Stations and Unmanned Aerial Systems. Sensors 2011, 11, 6328-6353.